The Watering Hole; Thursday August 18 2016; A Poetic Summation of Donald J. Trump, His Egomaniacal Persona, and the Downhill Slope Implicit

I’ve about given up on coming up with any reasonable summation of Donald Trump, his persona, his politics, his ambitions, etc., mainly because every time I think I’ve got him figured, the next day rolls around, he opens his mouth one more time and poof, there goes yesterday’s summation. So I thought I’d try Emily’s idea; since the Trump of Yesterday is History, let’s see if we can convert it/him to Poetry as a means of describing/summarizing the Philosophy implicit therein. Make sense?

Easier said than done, but still worth a try. So here it is, my five day attempt at converting Yesterday’s History into Poetry with a bit of Philosophy (hopefully) embedded.

Democracy allows a boundless sprawl of mindless thought.One brief glance today unmasks a nominee who deems toNe’er dismiss his savage spiels, hoping they’ll all soon be taughtAs “brilliant” memes. Whilst he himself wears masks of learned view,Lengthy rhetoric from this vapid nominee revealsDismal platitudes, each expressed as if nonsensicalJudgment of those who are more sane, of those whose soul appealsTo wisdom, not to ignorance of issues topical.Racial bigots find curious relief in hate and fearUntil they sense themselves dismissed by grand impassioned dreams;Misogyny as well embraces minds that aim to smearPerspectives based on common goals of life — with bogus schemes.Deliv’rance of this nation’s soul and heart is thus on holdTill egomania’s greed and sloth are either bought — or sold.

******

So that was last weekend — fourteen lines and 196 syllables arranged acrostically in a Shakespearean rhyming pattern (*abab-cdcd-efef-gg*), which came up short. Not because of poetic failure, but because the egomaniacal Trump keeps on unleashing ever-more wild and rabid dogs, to the point where not even an Acrostic-Fourteener-Quatorzain can put all the dogs to sleep! So what then? A five line, 39 syllable limerick, maybe? Lessee; how about this:

There once was a man named DrumpfinskiWho ran to be PresidentinskiBut his problems with wordsWere remindful of turds —Including his ‘friend’ Vlad Putinski.

Yeah, that kinda works. I know it’s not a total and complete summary of the Trump/Russia romance, but since poetry is always intended to be far more an esoteric summation than a court document, I think it works pretty well.

Time will ultimately reveal, of course, exactly what demands Trump’s candidacy (and/or his election? shudder!) might put on the poetic world, but it’s fair to assume the word “minimal” will not be a good fit under any imaginable circumstance.

There is a difference, of course, between the “demands” a given political outcome might put “on the poetic world” and what that same result might actually impose on the ‘real world,’ a dilemma I’ve here tried to summarize alphabetically, if not exactly poetically. More simply stated, ‘what might be America’s “ABC’s” should an egomaniacal right wing nutcase such as Donald J. Trump (or any such) actually win an election and thereby be granted ‘full power of the State” here in Amurkkka? Here are my thoughts on that specific matter in alphabetical order, mostly:

So there it is; my poetic summation of the candidacy of Donald J. Trump along with the probable consequences to this country should our really rottenest luck prevail and enshrine his election as POTUS. Maybe T.S.Eliot, close to a hundred years ago, managed to sum up that never-ending human dilemma when he wrote:

The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leafClutch and sink into the wet bank. The windCrosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.(. . .)I think we are in rat’s alleyWhere the dead men lost their bones.

Stated another way,

Indeed.

Or, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge once put it:

Sir, I admit your general rule,That every poet is a fool,But you yourself may serve to show it,That every fool is not a poet.

Brilliant frugal! Never even knew there was a literary structure such as the Acrostic Fourteener Quatorzain (AFQ).
The Drumpfuhrer’s adoption of all things Reichwing Nuttia will guarantee a rollicking insult, lie and smear fest for the next 80 days.
Apparently he’s never heard the axiom, when the hole you are in is over your head, stop digging.

Thanks RUC. Poetry can be fun! I remain, however, surprised that Drumpf doesn’t write and speak more poetry. I mean he is, after all, “very highly educated,” and of course he certainly does “know words,” “the very best words” in fact.

Maybe now that Breitbart is taking over his campaign there’ll be a lot more poetry come out of it. Time will tell. 🙂

For most of my ‘thinking’ life I’ve pretty much figured that the vengeful and hate-filled destructive “god,” when contrasted with the loving and creative opposite version pretty much cancel each other out, and leaves us with science — physics, chemistry, biology, alladem — instead, I like science — no vitriol. Logic and common sense only. Science can also explain Trump’s hair. Pretty much at least, something that no concept of god could EVER manage to come up with.

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
~Shakespeare, From Macbeth (V, v, 19)

Along the “for profit” insurance woes is Aetna pulling out of the exchanges in several states. Of course, the other part of the story is they said that as a warning to pressure the Federal Government to approve their takeover of rival Humana.

This is Aetna CEO’s Mark Bertolini’s compensation: Bertolini receives a total compensation of $4.76 million per year, which is composed of $940,000 in salary, 1.89 million in bonuses and $1.93 million in “other compensation”. In 2013, Bertolini received $30.7 million in compensation. How can a corporation that pays one person so much be losing money?

The total, with interest, had grown to almost $30 million. The state had doggedly pursued the matter through two of the casinos’ bankruptcy cases and even accused the company led by Mr. Trump of filing false reports with state casino regulators about the amount of taxes it had paid.

But the year after Governor Christie, a Republican, took office, the tone of the litigation shifted. The state entertained settlement offers. And in December 2011, after six years in court, the state agreed to accept just $5 million, roughly 17 cents on the dollar of what auditors said the casinos owed.

Crooked Hillary? Really? Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the crookedest business Idiot of them all?

Think of how bad Obama’s been for Exxon Mobil et al. Last time I bought gas, I only had to pay $1.42 per gallon! When Bush was Pres., it was well over $4 per gallon for months. Obama really hates Amurkkka when he destroys the economy by lowering prices. Trump will change that, and very soon prices will skyrocket and prosperity for all!!!!

The “sub prime mortgage” and energy industries did so well under Bush that it created a false dichotomy. Their insane profits counteracted any and all other economic indicators. The only people who did well under the Bush regime simply funneled all their profit into offshore accounts and various other tax havens. Every effing penny was, in fact, taken out of the economy.

Here is the argument I make to every rightwhiner I encounter.

If the government gives a poor person one dollar, in the form of a direct payment? That dollar is spent on food, rent, and gas so it goes straight back into the economy.

If the government gives a rich person one dollar, in the form of a tax break? That dollar is sequestered into a tax haven and is removed from the economy.

This argument has actually converted several of my friends so I stick with it.